Walter Alan Odom was murdered in Lawton on June 15, 1981. He was twenty-one years old.

Walter, who went by his middle name, Alan, was a Florida native. He was enlisted in the army, bringing him and his young wife to Fort Sill in Lawton.

Alan was found dead in his Lawton home on Ferris Avenue by his wife at approximately 5:30am on June 15th. He had been stabbed four times with what was described as being a large, sharp instrument. He had been stabbed in the heart, twice in the abdomen, and once more in the chest. Both of his knees had also been slashed. His wife found his body in the bedroom of their home, lying between the bed and a wall.

Investigators said that it was clear that some kind of incident had taken place in the home. A front window had been knocked out, however police believe that this had been done by Alan after he had been stabbed. Alan’s wife, Carlana, had told police that she had told Alan to lock the door behind her when she had left the home at around 1:00 am. Where she had gone when she left isn’t clear, but the incident must have happened sometime between 1:00 am and when she returned home at approximately 5:30 am. There were no signs of forced entry to the home.

Initially it was believed that Alan was killed in some kind of revenge plot. Shortly before his murder, a woman who was not his wife had filed a sexual assault complaint against him. The week before his murder, Alan had plead guilty in Comanche County courts to a count of breaching the peace, a charge that stemmed from this sexual assault complaint. It does seem that at the time he was murdered, Alan wasn’t going to be in Lawton much longer. He had been about to go on military assignment to Germany.

Newspapers say that they initially had seven suspects in his murder- including his wife, Carlana and this mystery woman who had filed the complain against him. Eventually though, authorities would say they had ruled out the revenge motive in the killing, and that they had ruled out robbery, saying that they believe they knew who killed him, but that they “couldn’t prove it was a murder.”

Alan’s death remains on the list of unsolved murders submitted by Oklahoma to the FBI. He was survived by his wife, his parents and his brother.

If you have any information regarding the murder of Walter Alan Odom, please contact the Lawton Police Department at 580-581-3270.